by Kirsty Eagar
‘Shouldn’t you be out front, Adam? Bussing?’
I flatten against the cool-room door but his bulk still brushes me on his way past. He’s left the lid off the container and I shut it thinking that if I’ve got time I’ll tip the curry out and make a fresh batch, free from 8s. But I probably won’t get time. There are fifteen boxes of pre-made pastry and bread dough in the freezer room that need to be emptied.
I use a box of frozen croissants to wedge open the freezer door. I get the heebie-jeebies when I’m in there with it closed, a horror of being locked in somehow. The freezer is nested inside the cool room so it’s not like you get much of a break from the cold with the door open – the cool room’s temperature is 4°C. If someone blocks the door to the cool room I’m still screwed, but I will get a slower death.
Whoever took delivery of the frozen stuff was supposed to unpack it. Instead, they’ve stacked the boxes up inside the freezer doorway, completely blocking access to the shelves. I look up at that tower of boxes and I start to cry, big wet snotty sobs. I don’t know what I’m doing. I should have stayed at uni like a normal person, like everybody else. Then I’d be nice and clean and safe, doing nice, clean, safe things. What I can’t get over is how quickly it happened, me falling out of my own life.
I close the kitchen at eleven-thirty. I’ve just finished putting the chopping boards and fryer baskets through the wash when Georgina’s perky face appears in the window.
She dings the bell even though she knows I’ve seen her.
‘Nachos, wedges and a steak sandwich, lovey. Ta.’
I open my mouth to tell her that the kitchen is closed but she’s disappeared already. Deep male voices reverberate through the window from the front and I can hear her giggle. I ding the bell back and wait.
‘The kitchen’s closed,’ I tell her.
Her blue eyes look incredulous and I wonder why she cannot seem to see the clean, wiped spaces and the cover that’s been placed over the deep fryer.
‘Can you do it for these guys? I know them from school.’
‘I turned the grill and fryer off half an hour ago. I told you, remember? The oil’s cold. It’ll take ages to heat up again. And my shift’s finished. I’m off now.’
She tilts her head at me, tweaking her short black hair as though she’d like to say something more. Georgina makes me feel uncomfortable. Early on she toted me up and decided I was short of whatever it is that she thinks is important. She’s studying marketing or something.
I’m trying to bristle up so I don’t apologise. The kitchen shift always finishes at twelve. The fryer is always turned off about half an hour before. Same as it ever was. I shouldn’t have to tell her the news.
She disappears from view. A moment later I hear her low muttering and one of the male voices saying, ‘Well, tell her to turn it back on.’
I scuff out to the office. The roster is open on Emilio’s desk. Emilio himself is long gone, he slunk out at ten. He had no reason to slink, he’d been in here since seven in the morning. But he’s a bit of a martyr, old Emilio.
I take off my apron and cap, pull the elastic out of my ponytail and scrabble my fingers through my hair. It’s lank and oily from the cap and my scalp feels tight and sore. Then I hunt around on the desk for a pen to sign off with, spotting the yellow sticky note that Emilio’s pressed to the roster.
Carly,
Can you do the lunch shift front of house Sunday?
Thanks,
E.
I give the note the finger. Sunday and Monday are my days off and even if they weren’t there is no way I’d do front of house. I’m not going to stand behind that register, meeting and greeting people, talking cheery shit with them. I hate people. I can only just deal with the other staff, and that’s because if they want to speak to me they have to ring a bell and look through a little window.
Emilio knows this. I told him when I first got the job that I only wanted to do kitchen stuff and I could only work the night shift. I said I was happy to work here so long as he understood that, which sounds high and mighty, but I said it in a nice grovelling way. And he nodded like he’d heard me. But now he keeps pushing for more, all the time. I hate that about people. Why can’t they just respect what you want, instead of always suiting themselves?
All the time now Emilio says, Great job with the kitchen, Carly. Things seem a lot smoother since you’ve stepped in. We’re going to have to get you out front soon. Give you a turn on coffee.
As if coffee-making is the pinnacle of achievement. When he says those things, I get a cold panic. I feel like I’m being bulldozed slowly.
I sit down in Emilio’s chair and rub my face, feeling the grease and salt on my forehead. There’s just no way I’ll do front of house. I pat around for the sticky notes and write Emilio a message: Regretfully E., as I told you when I started, I’m unable to do day shifts. Apologies for not being able to help you out on this one. C. A business communication. I started a degree in it, don’t you know?
He’s never asked me why I won’t do day shifts, but I’ve got an answer figured out in case he does. I’ll tell him I’ve got another job as a carer. I look after an old sick lady, just up the road from me.
He wouldn’t accept the truth: I won’t work days because that’s when I surf, Emilio. That’s the only reason I’m doing this job and that’s why I won’t work an hour longer than it takes to cover rent and petrol. I will do whatever it takes to surf every day. I love it that much. It is my only good thing.
Front of house – like hell.
Between Emilio, Adam and Georgina, I’ve had a really great night. Bees are loose in my head, buzzing and stinging.
I decide to go the long way home, Wakehurst Parkway. I just want to drive. I want to smoke too, but that’ll have to wait. I’m no good at smoking and driving at the same time, the ash always comes back in the window at me and, besides, I like to take my time over a cigarette, make it an event.
Once through Seaforth and on the open road, I speed up to ninety, winding down my window. I push through to a hundred and ten, and the lights from the cars coming the other way blind me. I feel like I’m being sucked towards them, like you can be sucked over the edge of a cliff. I focus on the white line on my side of the road. The urge to let go of the wheel and just see what happens is compelling. If I live, I’ll wake to find myself in hospital. I won’t have to do anything, deal with anybody, talk, be scared anymore, because I will have become somebody else’s responsibility. And if I die, well then everything’s solved. No more being angry like this.
It’s so tempting. I frighten myself when I cross the bridge near the back of the lakes at a hundred and twenty. The bitumen is raised there and when I hit it at that speed, for a moment I think I’ve lost control and the car’s going to hit the side rail. But then I’m over the bridge and I brake sharply. I squeeze the steering wheel tight, leaning forward like Mr Magoo, really trying to concentrate on what I’m doing. I pass Garden Street, which is where I’d usually turn to get to Powderworks Road and home, and turn off at the smash repairer’s, making my way through the back streets to the break.
I pull into the top car park and sit there in my car, smoking out the window, listening to the surf. It’s too dark to go down to the beach, just being near it is enough.
If I close my eyes I can imagine crashing. I see it in slow motion, like a crash-test dummy reconstruction where I’m the dummy. The Laser swerving across the road to hit a brick wall – the one near the sports grounds at the back of Seaforth – yellow bonnet crumpling, metal screeching, indicator lights exploding and spraying orange glass. My neck whiplashes forward, the windscreen shatters and the car presses in around me like a cocoon. Tight, tight, tighter, the warmest hug in the world.
It scares me. I don’t want to do it. But sometimes I think it’s the only way I’ll be able to turn off what’s in my head.
3
Outside
‘Do you mind me doing this?’ Hannah calls from the kitche
n.
‘What?’ I frown down at my newspaper. If I stare hard enough and long enough maybe she’ll be quiet and disappear back upstairs.
‘Washing my face in your kitchen sink. I could use your bathroom sink if you did mind.’
‘No. Feet, well … but your face, that’s okay.’
‘Are you sure, Cookie?’
‘Go for your life.’
She appears in the doorway in her baggy white sleeping T-shirt and undies – at least I think she’s wearing undies and I hope to neither confirm or deny that as a fact. She’s not wearing a bra; I can see clearly the outline of her heavy, sagging breasts under the T-shirt. Her long, slim legs make her appear oddly high waisted. When she is dressed, it’s either in the suits, stockings and short heels she wears to work, or in the red hotpants and black ankle boots she wears when she goes out dancing at her salsa club. Her wardrobe is schizophrenic.
Rubbing at her face with a towel, she asks, ‘Go for your life?’
‘It means do whatever you want.’
She stares at me intently, trying the phrase out again. ‘Go – for – your – life.’
Hannah is Dutch and speaks English really well, but she’s always working on it. She knows more about grammar and punctuation than I do, and English is my first language, and I started a degree in communications. I have not told her that last fact though. I haven’t told her much about me at all. As far as she knows I’ve always worked in kitchens, which is why she calls me ‘Cookie’.
I look down at my paper again. I’ve got segments of Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald spread out on the floor around me and Spectrum open between my legs. I’m trying to read Bernard Zuel’s review. Bernard says the band in question aren’t the most advanced songwriters I’m likely to meet: their melodies can be haphazard and when it comes to song structures, simplicity usually rules. But he’s cool with that in this case because he says this band has a good ear for the pleasure of noise. I like that. The pleasure of noise. And he talks about jagged strips of guitar, which is another thing I like.
When I read Bernard I feel like I can make sense of the world. I never buy the CDs he’s talking about, I just like the reviews. I wish I could get Bernard to come and review my life for me, point out the obvious, tell me where the structure isn’t as simple as it should be. Then again, I probably wouldn’t like it at all. It would be a bad review.
‘Joost hated me doing it.’
I blink up at Hannah. ‘Hated you doing what?’
‘Washing my face in the kitchen sink.’
‘Oh.’
‘So, now I’m away from him, I’m gonna do it all I want.’
She shoots me an angry stare, as if I’ve somehow turned into her husband. She’s always doing stuff he wouldn’t like – two weeks ago she had her buttercup-blonde hair cropped short because Joost liked her to wear it long. But it’s not like he’d know. He’s back in the Netherlands, hoping she’ll sort herself out here in Sydney and eventually go back to him. She’s some sort of engineer, working at a firm in Frenchs Forest, being loaned out for a while from head office back in Amsterdam. I know all about it. More than I’d like to, in fact, because for some reason Hannah’s attached herself to me since I moved in. We share a two-storey duplex on Powderworks Road, five minutes drive from the break. She’s got the upper storey and I’ve got the lower storey.
When I answered the ad in the Manly Daily, Jean, our landlady, said, You’re very young … And I knew she was worried about me meeting the rent payments. So I told her my parents had gone overseas and rented out their house, and I was to use their rent payments to pay my rent while they were gone because I didn’t want to live in a house in the suburbs by myself when I could live near the beach. The easy way this lie just rolled out of my mouth surprised me. I never used to lie.
Anyway, the lie worked because Jean then took me to meet Hannah. I thought Hannah would be the perfect neighbour: she works days, I work nights, and she’s twenty-nine, ten years older than me, so we wouldn’t have much in common. But since Hannah’s plumbing has blocked up she’s been in my space constantly: using my shower, using my toilet, washing her face in my kitchen sink …
At that moment my mobile rings and I answer it without checking the screen, which is a mistake because it’s my mother and I’ll have to be careful what I say – I’m not about to explain my home situation to Hannah.
‘Your Brother has put a deposit down on a unit,’ Mum tells me.
She never uses Keith’s name when she’s talking to me. I asked him once if she refers to me like that, as Your Sister. He said, yes, she does, and what she says is usually bad: Your Sister is working in a restaurant … washing dishes – think of it! – all that money we spent sending her to university. She’d never wash the dishes at home.
If I was a sheep, I’d be black.
‘You’re kidding, where?’ I say.
‘Terrigal.’
‘That close?’ Our family home is at Forresters Beach on the Central Coast. The fact that Keith has bought near there is to me both insane and oddly fascinating, as is the fact that Keith is buying property at twenty-four. It shouldn’t be. He’s been saving since he was born.
Mum speaks of my older brother with awe; as if he’s not her son but someone she knew once who’s now moved on to better things. Every day she scans the Central Coast Express Advocate for his by-line.
‘It’s a good investment. You know what it’s like there in the holidays – you can’t get a car park. That’s what you could have, Carly.’
‘I don’t even like Terrigal, Mum.’
My name is Carla Lee and I’m a nineteen-year-old disappointment.
My father kicked me out of home, which was when I moved down here. Maybe I deserved it – our fight that night was a screamer, both of us yelling at the tops of our voices. It was over me dropping out of uni. At least on the surface that’s what it was about. But for me that fight was over old things. Age eight, someone is stealing from school bags and it’s mentioned in the school newsletter. My father’s voice: Have you checked her room? Age fifteen, busted sneaking in from a leagues club disco, drunk, too much make-up. A virgin. I don’t care how many men you sleep with, but while you’re under my roof you’ll abide by my rules.
My father is a man who takes five beers to a barbecue. Five. Not a six-pack. Because that’s what he’s calculated he’ll drink while he’s there. I hate that about him.
‘Be reasonable, love,’ Mum says in a wistful voice. ‘Your father just doesn’t want to see you throw away your future.’
That burns, the fact that she’s toeing the official line. Always with her, it’s him first, as though God died, making him God. If I was just angry it’d be easy, but it hurts too, it hurts so bad, because I love my mum and I’m scared being out of my family. But when I’m in it, I feel like I’m being pressed into the wrong shape. Things with Dad will never be the way I want them because I’m not what he wants. I’m trying to accept this, but it’s funny how you forget all the time.
I think what scared me about the night of our fight, was how close I came to letting it all out. Everything. All the things I don’t tell anybody. I wanted to scream it into his face, like it was his fault somehow. That frightened me. Sometimes I think about what would have happened if I’d done this, and I can see the look of disgust on his face.
When I don’t answer, Mum is quiet for a moment, then proceeds to Lee family business as though nothing’s wrong at all: what my aunts and uncles are doing, what my cousins are doing. She spends a lot of time worrying about what other people are getting up to. Only what they’re doing, though, not what they are, or how they’re feeling. I’m not even sure if she’s ever really looked at me, seen me.
I wonder what she’s said about me leaving. Maybe the PR is that I’m still at uni. Either way I’m gone, so the outcome is conveniently the same. The women in my family, they talk about carpets and couches and feature walls and pergolas; how they went to take a look at the new shoppi
ng mall/recreation club/homemaker centre; the holiday they went on; the musical they saw; what so and so’s eighteenth, or christening, or wedding, or some other event was like. It’s not bad, but it can make you feel lonely if you’re not into that stuff yourself.
While Mum’s talking Hannah reappears in the doorway, brushing her teeth. She’s staring at me but I can tell she’s thinking about something else. She keeps glancing at her watch and eventually goes back into the kitchen, her two minutes up. A second later I hear her rinsing her mouth out at the sink. She always brushes her teeth for exactly two minutes. She times it – I’m not kidding. Two minutes is a long time to brush your teeth. I tried it and my wrist got sore.
Mum cuts the call just before her ten minutes is up – she’s got some deal with Telstra. For a paranoid moment I wonder whether my location will show up on her phone statement – they know I’m in Sydney, and they know I’m working, but that’s all they know. Then I realise that even if they knew where I was they wouldn’t come after me. I’m outside the family now.
4
honey-warm light
COASTALWATCH
Swell size 0.5–1 metre – Swell direction E
There will be some leftover swell in the 2–3ft range early, easing to a less consistent 2ft during the afternoon. Protected northern corners are best …
Sunday. I’m down there by ten, later than I would have liked. That sort of time is fine for weekdays, but on weekends it’s late enough for the crowds. Weekends are a free-for-all. You’ve got to be there by six-thirty at the latest.
I’m sick with tiredness – should have gone to sleep when I got home from work. I woke up at nine-thirty with newspaper pages strewn over me like blankets. Now all I can think about is getting into that salt water.